One of the local NGOs that I’ve been observing is Friends Service Council Nepal (FSCN) based in Imadhol 7, Lalitpur. FSCN is a not-for-profit national level non-government organization working on socio-economic development and human rights. The organization has been partnering with both Dan Church Aid (DCA), which is part of the ACT Alliance, and World Jewish Relief (WJR) in a variety of projects in both Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. I was recently invited to present a session on value chain development as part of a three day Rural Enterprise Creation and Business Skills Training of Trainers for 12 staff. The classes ranged from developing a business plan to marketing to what makes an entrepreneur. The purpose of the training was to ensure that FSCN staff could teach business skills to community members participating in livelihoods development.
Although I didn’t participate in all three days, as I entered the training hall on the morning of my seminar I could see on the walls that a lot of work had previously been completed. The seminar which I gave was well received and to some extent helped to tie things together as establishing a successful enterprise cannot be complete unless it follows a market systems approach, i.e. value chain.
The important point for me was seeing young Nepalis, mainly in the role of Social Mobilizers becoming confident enough to teach community members, possibly growing commercially for the first time in their lives, how to run an enterprise. For community members it is vitally important to understand that in growing commercially they must have basic business skills in order to increase their incomes. This is the case no matter what type of an enterprise a family is operating. I know that FSCN has hired professionals to teach basic entrepreneurial skills to community members but now thanks to FSCN and DCA, staff capacity has been built in order to implement these trainings.
As I’ve learned, knowledgeable Social Mobilizers, who typically are very young and educated can play a key role in the community for imparting information such as health, education and livelihoods, linkages especially to markets and various actors, etc. For many this is their first professional job. The more trainings which Mobilizers attend and the more they are willing to live in and be part of a community the more positive, trusting relationships can be built. This can lead to behavior changes which can have a positive effect on community members. This work is very difficult but given their enthusiasm the work of a Mobilizer can have great impact.
The really exciting part is that there is potential for partnering on livelihoods development between FSCN, DCA and WJR. Although the first phase of both projects was about livelihoods in an immediate post-disaster situation which was understandably was done very quickly, the next phase is about building market systems and sustainability. When the INGOs finish their work, FSCN will carry on as a major facilitator of a livelihoods market focused approach assisting in building strong relationships resulting in higher household incomes and making these households part of the system. Once a system is established the potential for community economic development is unlimited.
I always try to inspire others when I teach, which I thoroughly enjoy. When I was a VSO volunteer in India I conducted numerous capacity building workshops throughout the country which made me very happy. As a practical exercise the participants worked on developing a value chain for specific products and as part of this and without my prompting, they also thought about value addition, e.g. for potatoes they thought about making aloo chips and for tomatoes they thought about creating an organic brand of ketchup. I told the participants that although value addition might be a dream for now, as there is a lot of hard work in developing a market system, that without dreams none of this would ever come true. They all seemed to take this to heart with a youthful understanding of turning dreams into reality.
Add new comment